Wex told Gamble he learned about Steve’s death sometime around February 16 when he heard other operating-room personnel talking about a newspaper article reporting the incident. Gamble said Wex might have mixed up the date because the Washington Post didn’t report the story until February 19.
One evening, shortly after Steve’s death, while they were in the locker room changing their clothes, Burgess told Wex that Kim had approached him a few days before she resigned in December 1997 and asked him if he knew anybody who would kill her husband for $50,000. Wex told Burgess to call the police and tell them what he knew, which he did.
Gamble then asked Wex about curare and succinylcholine, the two drugs that Kimberly may have used to kill Steve. Wex said both the drugs were present in the operating room and neither was controlled. The doctor explained that narcotics were dispensed by a system that only allowed a user to access the drugs by entering a personal identification number. That system provided a way for institutions to track the different narcotics. However, there was no such system in place for curare or succinylcholine, Wex said.
The reason those drugs weren’t tracked was because they couldn’t be abused. And for good reason—anyone who attempted to abuse curare or succinylcholine would die.
Gamble asked Wex if there was any way to determine whether Kimberly took either of the drugs from the operating room. Wex said it would be impossible to account for every dose of the drugs in question. According to Wex, if a doctor had a technologist draw a dose of either curare or succinylcholine and then didn’t use it, it would just be thrown into the trash.
“Based on your information and experience, do you think Kimberly could steal the drugs in question from the hospital?” Gamble asked Wex.
“It is absolutely possible,” he replied.
Wex said that anyone working in the operating room could steal one dose or multiple doses of the drugs because they were not kept under lock and key. Instead, they were kept on a cart, where they were available for immediate use during surgery. Wex added that there was ample opportunity for the surgical technologists, who prepared the room for surgery, to steal the drugs.
Gamble also asked Wex how the drugs were administered. Wex said they were either administered intravenously or intramuscularly. Wex added that during her career as a surgicial technologist, Kimberly would have seen the drugs used many times.
That same day Gamble also spoke with Dr. William Keefe, another anesthesiologist at Holy Cross Hospital. Again Gamble wanted to corroborate Burgess’s statement that after learning of Steve’s death, he also talked to Keefe about his conversation with Kimberly. Keefe said Burgess told him that Kim asked him if he would kill Steve for $50,000, or if he knew somebody who would do it for her. Like Wex, Keefe advised Burgess to contact police and tell them about that conversation.
Then Gamble asked Keefe the same questions he asked Wex about curare and succinylcholine. Keefe provided the same information as Wex about the availability of the drugs in the operating room. Keefe said the drugs were kept in the top drawer of the anesthesiologists’ cart in the operating room. He said there was no accountability for the drugs and it would be nearly impossible to find out if a few vials were stolen during the time Kim worked at Holy Cross.
On March 3 Gamble interviewed Helen Basaman, an assistant nurse manager for the operating room at Holy Cross Hospital. Basaman supervised the surgical technologists, including Burgess and Kimberly.
Basaman said that Burgess also told her about his conversation with Kim. Basaman said Burgess approached her on February 19, the day the Washington Post reported on Steve’s death. Burgess told Basaman that Kimberly asked him if he could find a hit man to get rid of her husband for $50,000. Basaman recalled that Burgess said he believed Kimberly was serious about having her husband killed. Basaman told Burgess to do what was right and advised him to call the state police.
Basaman told Gamble that Kimberly Hricko was a smart and energetic employee. She said Kim never discussed any personal issues with her. Through this interview Gamble also learned that a former coworker, Marcia Carroll, visited Kim at Perkins after her arrest.
During Gamble’s March 18 interview with Carroll, an operating-room nurse at Holy Cross Hospital, she told him that she had visited Kimberly at Perkins three times since she had been arrested. Carroll said she went to see Kimberly to offer spiritual and emotional support, even though the two had not been particularly close outside of work. She told Gamble she started visiting Kim because of her religious beliefs.
During her first visit Carroll told Kim she didn’t want to know anything about the case, because she didn’t want to become a witness. So Kimberly didn’t talk to Carroll about her relationship with Steve or his death. Their conversations were limited to religion and concern for Kim’s daughter.
Gamble also spoke with other employees of Holy Cross Hospital. Through these interviews police learned that coworkers and supervisors considered Kim a knowledgeable surgical technologist who enjoyed a good reputation. In fact, the supervisors wanted to hire Kimberly to work at the hospital full-time. During her time at Holy Cross, Kim actually worked for First Assist Inc., a temporary medical-staffing agency.
On Monday, March 23, Gamble spoke with Sean Petrone, the golf professional at Patuxent Greens Country Club, where Steve worked as the course superintendent. Petrone, who first met Steve at Patuxent Greens, worked with him for approximately three years. The two were friends until Steve’s death.
Petrone said Steve told him about the problems in his marriage and said he was going to counseling to become a better husband and father. Petrone said he didn’t know that Kim was having an affair.
A couple of weeks before Steve died, Kimberly called Petrone and asked him to take Steve out for the evening to have a “guy night,” because she would be going out with her girlfriends. Petrone said it was either on a Thursday or Friday night that he, Steve, and Jeff McMackin, who was then the assistant superintendent at the golf course, went to the Green Turtle Pub in Laurel.
Petrone told Gamble that Steve didn’t drink much alcohol that evening. In fact, contrary to what Kim wanted everyone to believe, Steve wasn’t much of a drinker, nor did he ever smoke. Petrone said he remembered socializing with Steve on four or five separate occasions and never saw him smoke.
Although Steve did chew tobacco, Petrone said he hated cigarette and cigar smoke. Petrone recalled several instances that Steve talked to him about his aversion to cigarette and cigar smoke. Another Patuxent employee, who worked with Steve for about a year, said he had never seen Steve smoke, although he did chew tobacco.
The next day Gamble interviewed McMackin, who was promoted to course superintendent at Patuxent after Steve’s death. McMackin, who had worked as Steve’s assistant for two years, told police he and Steve were close friends.
McMackin said Steve also told him about his marital problems and that he was in counseling because he wanted to improve his relationship with Kim. McMackin said he didn’t know that Kim was having an affair and he didn’t believe that Steve knew about it, either, or he would have mentioned it.
According to McMackin, before Steve planned the Valentine’s Day weekend getaway to Harbourtowne, he checked with Kim to make sure she wanted to go, despite the fact that McMackin said it would be better to surprise her. Steve felt that given the problems in their marriage, surprising Kim wouldn’t be such a good idea. Steve later told McMackin that Kimberly was looking forward to going on the minivacation.
Before Steve and Kim left for Harbourtowne, Steve called McMackin and asked if he would feed the Hrickos’ cat and dog over the weekend, which he did. That was the last time McMackin ever spoke to Steve.
When asked about Steve’s alcohol and tobacco use, McMackin told Gamble that Steve was not a big drinker.
“I’ve seen Steve drink a couple of beers in a social setting, but never knew him to drink to intoxication,” McMackin said. “And Steve never smoked anything, but he did chew tobacco.”
McMackin recalled once when he and Steve attended a conference hosted by a company that manufactured and sold golf-course maintenance equipment. After the conference the representatives of the company treated McMackin and Steve to an expensive dinner at an upscale restaurant. After they finished eating, the representatives passed a cigar box around the table and encouraged McMackin and Steve to have a complimentary cigar. McMackin said the cigars were high quality and expensive.
Everyone at the table took a cigar, except Steve. When McMackin lit up his cigar, Steve turned to him and said, “How can you do that to yourself?”
McMackin told Gamble that Steve wouldn’t even let anyone smoke in his office. Gamble then showed McMackin a package of Backwoods cigars, identical to the pack found in the Hrickos’ room at Harbourtowne, and asked if he had ever seen Steve with that brand of cigars. McMackin said, “No. Steve did not smoke. Never, ever.”
Near the end of March, State Trooper Jack McCauley interviewed two of Steve’s coworkers at Patuxent Greens Country Club about Steve’s habits. Steve’s immediate supervisor, Dana Kessler (pseudonym), who had known him for three years, told McCauley she had never seen Steve smoke anything in all the time she knew him. In fact, she recalled that Steve wouldn’t even allow her to smoke in the golf cart when they were riding together because the smoke really irritated him.
Kessler said about a month before he died, Steve asked her for some time off because he was having problems with his wife and needed to see a counselor. Steve told Kessler how Kim was his whole life. Shortly before Valentine’s Day Steve told his boss that things were better in his marriage. Kessler said she knew Steve had planned something special for Kim for Valentine’s Day, but she didn’t know what it was.
After Steve’s funeral Kim called Kessler to get the address of one of Steve’s coworkers. Kessler asked Kim how her daughter was doing and Kim said a trust fund had been set up for Sarah and that they had collected on Steve’s life insurance. Kim said Sarah didn’t have to worry about money.
McCauley also talked to Mitch Bergman (pseudonym), a mechanic at Patuxent Greens, about Steve. Bergman, who started working at the club in November 1997, met Steve in September of that year when he interviewed for the mechanic’s position. Bergman said he saw Steve every day at work and never saw him smoke. Bergman, who was a smoker, said Steve made him smoke outside because he couldn’t stand the smell of it.
Bergman told police that Steve said he was having marital problems and that he was working too many hours and not spending enough time at home with his family.
A former Patuxent Greens mechanic, Don Sanderson (pseudonym), who oddly enough lived on Kimberly Drive in Stevensville, Maryland, told police he had worked for Steve for two years and three months, until September 19, 1997, when he left to take a position at another golf course. Sanderson said he and Steve had become good friends and they had similar views about family life. Sanderson said Steve often spoke highly of Kim and Sarah. He said he was shocked to learn that Kim was seeing another man. Sanderson said he last spoke to Steve on January 14, 1998. During their conversation Steve said he was working too many hours and it was affecting his relationship with Kim. Steve said he had set up an appointment with a counselor to try and get his marriage back on track. Sanderson said he didn’t know what kind of problems the couple was having.
Gamble asked Sanderson whether Steve smoked, drank heavily, or liked to look at pornography. Sanderson said not only did Steve not smoke, but smoke made him physically ill. Sanderson recalled the night he and Steve attended a retirement party for a coworker. During the party most of the men were smoking cigars and he and Steve talked about how cigar smoke made them sick. Sanderson said he saw Steve drink a beer or two on a couple of occasions, but he had never seen Steve drunk, nor had he ever seen Steve look at pornography of any kind. In fact, Sanderson said, Steve wouldn’t allow pornography to be displayed in his shop.
Gamble also interviewed several of the Hrickos’ neighbors to find out if any of them had ever heard the Hrickos arguing. None of them had.
During their investigation, the state police, with help from the medical examiner, eliminated every other cause of death and put a circumstantial case together; so when the case went to trial, they would be able to lead the jury into believing Kim killed her husband.
“We subpoenaed all his medical files and we knew we were going to have the doctor testify in court that Steve was healthy,” Gamble said. “Then we started trying to attack the story she gave police that night, including that he brought a pack of cigars with him.”
The pack of smokes taken from room 506 was a package of Backwoods Mild ’n Natural cigars. The package was light brown with red and white lettering and had a white $2.49 price tag printed on it in blue ink.
“I was assigned to locate the store that the cigars were purchased from,” Gamble said.
So on March 20, Gamble visited approximately twenty-five liquor and convenience stores in Prince George’s County in the Laurel area, where the Hrickos lived. Approximately one-quarter of the stores sold the Backwoods cigars, but most of them did not use price tags. Although some stores did use price tags, they weren’t the right size. Gamble then checked Astors Liquors in the Laurel Shopping Center, which was located about three miles from the Hrickos’ house on Belle Ami Drive.
“I had the package of Backwood cigars with me with the pricing label of two dollars forty-nine cents—back then, people weren’t using barcodes, so the sticker was unique,” Gamble said. “I found this pack sitting on a shelf with a higher price on the tag, but I also found one that had two price stickers on it—one higher than the other. I peeled the first one back, which was two ninety-nine, and there is my two forty-nine, plus tax, sticker. The price had gone up in the two weeks since Hricko died.”
Gamble then talked with Peggy Delis, the owner of the store, and asked her if those particular Backwoods cigars had previously been priced at $2.49. After checking her records Delis said the price had been raised from $2.49 to $2.99 sometime during the week of March 15.
Delis showed Gamble a Monarch Marking tag maker model 1115 that her employees used to price items in the store. Delis showed Gamble that the pricing gun could be set to produce the identical $2.49+tax sticker that was on the package of cigars taken from the Hrickos’ room at Harbourtowne.
“I bought the package of cigars with the two ninety-nine price tag overlapping the two forty-nine price tag and told the manager that I wanted [the] pricing gun, which I then took back to the state police crime lab, along with some pricing stickers,” Gamble said. “The state police forged-documents person looked at the gun and determined it produced the sticker on the package of Backwoods cigars found in the Hrickos’ room at Harbourtowne.”
Delis also told Gamble that although Astors Liquors was equipped with a video-surveillance camera, the store did not have any surveillance tapes for the days before Steve’s death. However, Delis said Gamble could show pictures of Steve and Kimberly to her employees to see if they could remember if either of them had purchased the cigars.
“I had put together a photo spread with Kim and five other pictures of similar-looking people with reddish hair or a reddish tint to their hair, and I did the same for Stephen, and I showed them to each of the clerks at Astors Liquors, but no one knew them,” Gamble said.
But luck was on Gamble’s side. There was one more Astors employee he hadn’t yet interviewed—Doris Grave Coles, who was the cashier on duty Friday, February 13—Kim didn’t work that day—and Thursday night, February 12. Gamble went back to the liquor store on March 24 to interview her.
When Gamble showed her the photo lineup, Coles immediately pointed to Kim’s picture and said she recognized her, but she could not pick out Steve from the photos Gamble showed her. Coles told Gamble that Kimberly came into the store and bought cigarettes, a pack of cigars, and beer. Gamble asked her if she remembered what kind of cigars Kim purchased. Coles went to the rack and removed a package of Backwoods smokes—t
he packs come in two colors, dark brown and light brown—but she picked up the wrong-color package. Instead of picking up the light brown package, which was the color of the package found in the Hrickos’ room, she picked up the dark brown pack.
“She said those were the cigars Kimberly bought,” Gamble said.
Gamble then asked Coles why she remembered Kimberly?
“I asked her for some ID and then I asked her where she got her hair colored,” Coles said. “And when I said I liked her hair color and where did she get it colored, she turned into a bitch and told me that her hair was a natural color. She grabbed the driver’s license out of my hand and said she didn’t dye her hair.”
Coles later testified to that in court. Her testimony was important because initially Kimberly said she didn’t know Steve had those cigars. In fact, Kimberly said the cigars were on the table at home and she didn’t even know Steve packed them.
Gamble later received the report from the Maryland State Police Crime Lab that concluded: “The marketing tag marker used to prepare the known price tag samples and the marketing price tag marker used to prepare the questioned price tag stamp are one and the same tag marker.” The examiner also concluded that the ink used on both price tags was the same.
On Wednesday, April 1, Mike Miller called Corporal Keith Elzey at the Easton Barracks to tell him he had found a hypodermic syringe on the Harbourtowne golf course. Elzey then drove to the golf course and met Mike in the maintenance shop to recover the syringe. Mike told Elzey that one of the employees found the syringe in a ditch on Deep Water Point Road, which is located next to the golf course’s fifth hole, and is about a mile from room 506. The employee found the syringe on Tuesday, March 31, while he was looking for a golf ball. He then threw it in a trash can at the shop for safety reasons. When the employee told Mike about it, Mike immediately retrieved it from the trash can and placed it in a plastic Baggie.
An Act Of Murder Page 16